A Study On Spoken English Tests Of CET Band Four And Six Under The Authenticity Principle

With the development of globalization, the use of English for communication hasbecome more and more important. Oral English proficiency has been taken as animportant aspect of a person’s comprehensive linguistic capability. However, a greatnumber of college students are facing criticism for having not acquired a high levelcompetence in spoken English. To solve this problem and to enhance the level ofcollege English teaching, the educators and researchers have been endeavoring topromote the reforms of college English teaching in the past thirty years. As the reformdeepens, College English Tests Band4and6(CET4and CET6), endowed withextensive social recognition and authority, have played an indispensable role inpromoting college English teaching and has been a prevailing English test for collegestudents since1980s. Spoken English test (SET) as the subset of CET had been newlyimplemented during the past few years. This research aims to probe into the attitudeof the test takers toward the CET-SET after its continual reforms. There are threequestions being addressed in this research:(1) How do the test takers comment thecurrent CET-SET regarding various testing aspects?(2) To what extent do CET-SETreplicate real life context according to the test takers?(3) If there are deficiencies inthe present testing model, how to redeem them?The research included83students who took CET-SET in November2014.Questionnaires and interviews were adopted to investigate the authenticity ofCET-SET with regard to the testing format, testing tasks, time allocation, the testingenvironment, administration, cooperation with the other test taker, fairness and theback-wash effect of CET-SET, etc. Semi-structured interview was adopted in thepresent research, which served as a supplement to help answer the research questionsconcerning test improvement. The results of descriptive analysis and ANOVA show the majority of thesubjects hold a positive view toward CET-SET in many aspects. Frequency accountsshow slight differences. In addition, the interview with the test takers indicateCET-SET is less authentic and still has room for improvement. Most of theinterviewees express their negative attitudes toward the testing environment of thecurrent CET-SET for the noise around. The computer assigns the candidates with arandom order for answering the questions, which makes it unfair for the firstrespondent since the second one would have more time to prepare. There is inevitablenervousness among the test takers when sitting in front of the computer to interactwith a stranger. For improvement, partitions are practical to reduce noise from othertest takers. The constraint of time could be adjusted. Participants could be expanded ina large scale.